Brother-in-law Jeff Gaffney went on NBC29 to express the family’s bafflement.
SCREEN CAPTURE

A 9:30am weekday phone call to his mother and a drive to his vacation house house at Wintergreen are about the only clues in the Wednesday disappearance of prominent developer and country club president Michael Comer.

What initially looked like a simple search for a hiker took a bizarre twist the following evening when officials indicated they no longer think that the missing Glenmore Country Club president and former Kessler Group project manager would be found at Wintergreen Resort where the 45-year-old Comer allegedly went missing July 1.

NBC29 reports that the search has ceased and broadcast a subsequent report in which brother-in-law Jeff Gaffney expresses the family pain and puzzlement that Comer’s car, keys, and cellphone were found at Wintergreen.

—originally posted July 3 at 5:57am under the headline, “Mystery deepens in club boss disappearance”

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We don’t live here anymore.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Fewer than two years ago, WHTJ hosted a splashy kick-off party for its Terri Allard-hosted program, Charlottesville Inside-Out. Today, the public broadcasting station licensed for Charlottesville still has Allard, but the rest of its local programming has gone dormant— along with its local office space.

One of the hard-hit Community Idea Stations out of Richmond, WHTJ— which once had five employees— recently closed its office at 528 East Maint Street, across from City Hall. The payroll has shrunk to two, and they both work from home. Former general manager D.J. Crotteau left (more)

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Blogger and digital plagiarism watchdog Waldo Jaquith.
FILE PHOTO BY HOOK STAFF

Put a blog in Waldo Jaquith’s hands, even a literary magazine’s blog, and there’s no telling what can happen. Last week, the Virginia Quarterly Review employee called out Wired editor and best-selling author Chris Anderson on VQR’s blog for lifting whole passages from Wikipedia and other sources for Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” something many other reviewers, including New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, appeared not to have noticed.

The post came with a mea culpa from Anderson— he was told before-hand that his book was going to be challenged— who claimed that it was a mistake and that he  and his publisher had “forgotten” to cite the passages.

Jaquith’s post made an immediate impact, having generated 177 comments to date from people— including Anderson— arguing (more)

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Chiropractor Dolly Garnecki with patient Kayla Lisa, a 19-year-old Radford University student seeking to reverse her scoliosis through uncoventional care.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Judy Blume’s 1973 book Deenie plunged a generation of girls into panic over scoliosis, an all-too-common spinal curvature. But some Charlottesville area girls– unlike the book’s 13-year old title character– are opting for a therapy that controversially skips the notoriously bulky back brace and, as Deenie found, the cruel taunts of classmates.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says local chiropractor Dolly Garnecki, who denounces braces and surgery as ineffective treatments that put scoliosis sufferers, typically teenage girls, through unnecessary pain.

Kayla Lisa was 11 when her parents learned that she (more)

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“It takes courageous leadership, as we find in our president and in our Congressman,” said Delegate David Toscano, shown here with his Congressman.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The so-called Cap and Trade Bill, officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House of Representatives Friday, June 26 (after an explosion of favors for recalcitrant legislators), has earned freshman Congressman Tom Perriello (D-Ivy) the distinction of being among just 14 lawmakers, according to pundit E.J. Dionne, targeted by the national Republican Party. And Perriello appears to be the only one garnering his own television ad.

“Tell him to stop voting with Nancy Pelosi and start voting for Virginians instead,” says the anti-Perriello television commercial and a radio ad, both of which call the bill a “massive new tax.”

At a Wednesday morning press conference on the Downtown Mall, the Democratic Perriello appeared undaunted– and unwilling to grant the argument that (more)

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Three years after Sprint-Nextel spun it off to focus on wireless, landline carrier Embarq has been purchased by CenturyTel in an $11.6 billion deal. The two carriers will become CenturyLink, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, and serve 7.5 million customers in 33 states, according to a release. (And we remember the days when the local carrier was called Centel!)

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Construction on the Meadowcreek Parkway will continue after Judge’s ruling, for now.
FILE PHOTO BY GORDON BLOCK

After waiting for nearly six weeks, a group of Charlottesville citizens fighting against the Meadowcreek Parkway finally heard the judge had ruled against them in their lawsuit to stop the controversial road.

The plaintiffs argued May 19 that the city of Charlottesville illegally sold a nine-acre stretch of land east of Melbourne Road to the Virginia Department of Transportation by evading a three-fourths super-majority vote required by the Virginia (more)

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Robert Smith
PHOTO COURTESY UVA POLICE

A man wearing construction clothes allegedly grabbed a purse while in a UVA building June 29 and fled, plowing into a pursuing university employee with his car.

Robert Smith, 59, of 802-M Hardy Drive, is charged with malicious wounding, breaking and entering, and grand larceny.

According to police, Smith went into 918 Emmet Street, took the purse and was chased by its owner, who alerted others to the theft. Another UVA employee stood in front of Smith’s green Chevy Cavalier and went over the hood when Smith didn’t stop, says Lieutenant Melissa Fielding with UVA Police. The employee was treated and released at UVA Medical Center.

Police discourage standing in front of a fleeing suspect’s vehicle, says Fielding. “Get the license number, a description of the suspect, and the direction the car is headed,” she advises. “But any physical intervention is dangerous.”

On June 30, Smith was arrested at his home in a public housing project (which, incidentally, may soon be redeveloped), and was being held without bond at press time. He has no connection with the University of Virginia, says Fielding, and at age 59, is “outside the profile of our typcial larceny suspect.”

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